Zombies, Sheets, and Proper Behaviour
by howlingmoonrise
Summary: Norgatha Oneshot - On growing up, jealousy, and being together.


He was Norman, she was Agatha, and somehow, through time and space and afterlife, they had found each other.

With a clear conscience and a still heavy heart, he had thought her gone for good - for a while, that is, as he tried to focus on readjusting to his life on the small town of Blithe Hollow, his new-found popularity and all the reconstruction work to be done keeping his mind occupied. But just as he always greeted every deceased soul he met on his way, he longed to be able to do the same to Agatha, selfish as that thought was.

She was probably in paradise, anyway, and had no need at all for his greetings. He was glad for her, even if he felt her loss as if she had been his dearest friend.

And then, she had been there.

In his bedroom.

Observing his zombie-themed décor.

It sufficed to say that he had broken the glass of water he had been drinking from.

"Hi," she had said, shyly glancing up at him.

"H-hi," he had responded, even if he had been panicking inwardly at the glass shards all over the floor. Slow shock reaction time, it appeared, because it only actually sunk in half an hour later, when he was gallantly - as gallantly as an eleven year old could, anyway - explaining the concept of television and movies to the wonder-filled eyes of Agatha Prenderghast, back from the dead, the undead, and who knows what other degrees of deadness she had gone through. She probably wasn't even completely back, seeing as she still appeared mostly gray and somewhat see-through most of the time - not to mention the floating bit, and the invisible-to-other-people bit -, but her complexion glowed with what could only be described as life, impossible as it seemed to be.

He should have suspected it back then, in afterthought. How she never seemed to be too far from him, how she became more substantial the closer she got to him, how she didn't seem to be drawn to her tree anymore.

In the moment Norman had set her free, she had become linked to him instead.

He tried to hide how happy he was that she had chosen him and this new, strange world of his instead of paradise.

* * *

Agatha ages as he does, and he tries to not find that disconcerting, seeing as she technically was, you know, dead. Seasons changed, classes changed, even some people changed, yet she remains a constant in his life, always peering curiously over his shoulder at all the things his world has to offer.

Her hands brushes against his on the way home from school, and he tries to justify to himself that it was because of the cold. He fails.

"Norman?" she asks, perched on the edge of his bed. He tries not to think of how she fits perfectly in there, in the middle of his bedroom like there was no other place she'd rather be.

"Hmm?" he mutters instead, because even though they're both going through the awkward growing up phase, he feels far too uncoordinated and flustered to speak anything more than a few words. His voice had broken in the middle of a sentence as he'd enthusiastically introduced her to yet another of his favourite zombie comics a few days before, and though he'd heard the tiny 'cute' she'd smothered behind her tiny hands and flushed face, it didn't make him feel any less embarrassed about it.

He's just glad that ghosts don't have periods, because he isn't sure on how he'd deal with that.

"Do you think it's proper?"

He's confused. He figures the chance of his voice breaking on a single syllable is extremely low, so he risks out a question. "What?"

Agatha looks flustered as she gestures to the air between the two of them. "Proper. This, us, I mean."

"I guess," he says slowly, not daring to shrug like he would have done had it been anyone else to ask. He knows she is from a much different time, when people of different genders shouldn't be alone in the same room together unless chaperoned or married. Just the fact that she bothers asking, when they haven't done anything more than two good friends in modern age would have, is an example of how different their upbringings had been - he ignores the fact that good friends don't feel butterflies of gigantic proportions in their stomach when the other gets close enough for him to smell the fresh scent of her hair, or that good friends don't feel the urge to interlink their fingers with one another because her skin just felt so soft, so right against his. "It's a different age and culture, and we're just friends, after all."

Norman tries to ignore how her face falls at his words, and how his own stomach plummets towards the ground. We're just friends, after all.

"I guess," she echoes his earlier words, and turns towards the window to watch the rain fall outside.

* * *

His limbs are still gangly and clumsy when Norman finds his mind drifting to things he definitely shouldn't be thinking about, not about her. He finds himself restless at night, one of the few times when he doesn't have her constant company - it would be improper, she'd said, and he didn't realize just how much until he started dreaming about her and her pale skin, blue eyes boring into his as she gasps under him, graceful even as she writhes naked beneath his sheets. Those same sheets are soaked in sweat and other things when morning arrives, and he buries down the shame and takes great care in rising early and disposing of them before anyone can notice.

He starts both dreading and looking forward to the slightest touch between them, from shoulder-brushing to cheek-kissing, and his sister learns that there is a perfectly good reason as to why he spontaneously turns red when there is no visible reason for it. Courtney and his mother giggle together when they think he's out of earshot, talk about young love, and though the supernatural is still a thing hard for them to accept at times, they seem to take it as something perfectly normal where his crush on Aggie is concerned (not a crush, really, he doesn't feel that way, he really doesn't, so what if he wonders about how her lips would taste on his or how pretty she looks everyday or how he's really, really glad when she keeps her hand intertwined with his just a little bit longer).

Even Neil has joined in the teasing, nudging him about his 'ghost girlfriend' when he's sure she isn't around (because the one time he did tease him while she had been around, Aggie hadn't liked his insinuations at all and made use of the vestiges of her previous power to zap him constantly for the following hour until Norman had taken pity on him and decided it was time to leave).

They're watching a movie together, one of those older ones with bad acting and worse special effects, and he feels her move closer to him, subtly, as if she herself wasn't sure whether it was a good idea or not to do so. Norman wants to say that he can feel her warmth radiating against him, only it isn't really warmth, just spectral energy, and somehow he doesn't feel disappointed either way. He moves closer to her as well, and manages to nearly knock down the popcorn while trying to put his arm around her small shoulders. Agatha stiffens against him for one, two, three seconds, and then relaxes against his form, moulding herself to him.

He can feel the tiny puffs of air she breathes out, unnecessary as they are, as they tease the suddenly over-sensitive skin of his neck. He wants to hold her by the waist and bring her closer to him, close enough that he can feel every contour of her body, sharing space and body heat, but he doesn't because he knows that she wouldn't be comfortable with it. Small steps, he thinks, and his fingers lightly caress her silky dark tresses as her head leans against his shoulder. He doesn't move, and neither does she, and it's only when the final credits are rolling on the screen that he realises he can't remember a thing from the movie they were supposed to be watching. Agatha doesn't stirr even when Courtney opens the living room door the tiniest bit, pink lips curling into a knowing smile as she takes in the sight.

* * *

Norman has barely gotten used to his too-long limbs and lanky frame - it seemed, at last, that he'd stopped growing - when he finds himself on the receiving end of what seems to be supernaturally-charged jealousy.

"It's not like I accepted or anything," he complains, but Agatha adamantly refuses to face him, offering him her back instead. He knows her arms are crossed resolutely, and he's pretty sure her nose is up in the air in the same affected manner his sister has when she finds something offensive or particularly distasteful. If circumstances were any different, he would have laughed at the image of his favourite ghost acting in such a way, but since she's mad, and at him, he figures it's probably not such a good idea. Especially since he feels like his stomach is flipping upside down with dread.

"It doesn't matter," she says acidly, not sparing him a glance. "Maybe I should give you some space, you'll want to hang out with your girlfriend without the freaky ghost following you around."

"She's not my- You're not- Ugh!" he rasps out, hands going up to his eternally vertical hair. He's not good at defending himself, especially when Agatha Prenderghast is involved, especially when Agatha Prenderghast is the one doing the accusing. "Aggie, you know I don't think of you that way!"

"Well, I wouldn't know, now would I?" she sniffs. He feels guilty, though he's sure that he did nothing wrong except being in friendly terms with the girl that had asked him out and insulted Agatha as she did.

He tries to put a hand on her shoulder; Norman wants her to at least look him in the eye and see that he's being honest, but he ends up going through her. It's like he momentarily got swallowed into icy water, it's disconcerting at best because he can't think of the last time he went through a ghost, much less her, but then he realises that she meant to do it. Agatha doesn't want to be near him right know, he understands by the look in her eye.

"I'll just," he begins, not sure whether it's a good decision or not. "Leave you alone for a while, okay? We both have stuff to think about and I have the feeling you don't really want to see me at the moment."

Her stare freezes him more than going through her did. "Fine," she says, and he can nearly feel frost coating her words. "If that's what you want."

* * *

She's gone for over a week, and he tries to quiet the churning in his stomach. She's fine, he tells himself. Once she calms down she'll come back.

But he's scared, because she isn't electricity and anger and lightning anymore, she's now a part of him and vulnerable and he doesn't know how long she can maintain her form while away from him, if at all.

Norman knows she'll be at the tree, more out of sentimental reasons than anything else, but even though he knows that it doesn't stop him from imagining the worst case scenario because what if she didn't want to be with him anymore, what if she went back? He's grown too used to her presence, to her floating footsteps by his side, to her curious voice asking him about the wonders that didn't exist when she had been alive.

She is there, just as he hopefully expected her to be. Agatha wanted him to find her, he knows, because she would have gone somewhere else otherwise. This tree, though, is special to the two of them, and it gives him hope for a reconciliation.

"Aggie," he calls insecurely, not sure how to approach the ghost he has feelings for - because yes, Norman has feelings for her, even if he is still quite hesitant to give them a name (it's love, it's love, it's love and he knows it but he's being a coward and it'll take some time before he can even admit it to himself, much less to her, with her big eyes and pale face and the kind of soul he can't help to want to keep by his side for the rest of eternity).

Agatha turns to face him, slowly but with the kind of expression in her face that tells him that she has made a decision and won't be demoved from it.

He gulps. "I- I wanted to apologize for that thing last week."

"I know," she calmly says. "I heard when you explained everything to the girl. I think I was madder because I thought I was being replaced more than anything else."

Norman tries to run a hand through his hair. He fails. "I didn't react all that well at the time, either. I caused the whole misunderstanding, I'm sorry."

"It's fine," she says, and she means it. He can see it in her smile, the kind of smile that curls her lips in just the right way and lights up her entire being. He finds himself even more drawn to her when she does. He's lost, a seaman drawn in by an unknowing siren that wouldn't ever let him go, and he's by her side before she notices it.

"I missed you," he breathes out against her lips, and at last everything is perfect with his life.


End file.
